🔰 AOC drops NIGHTMARE news on Trump, Republicans

I'm joined now by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Thanks for joining me. Of course. Thank you. So right now we are watching as Republicans are going to their town halls across the country to the point where even the NRCC had said, look, just stop going to town halls. Not that they should maybe fix some of the things that people are upset about, but just don't go to the town halls. I have seen so much footage of you going to your own town halls, getting absolutely like harangued and harassed and yelled at. And yet you still go, you still show up. And so what's your reaction to the fact that, given your experience, watching these Republicans not even want to show up in the building? I think regardless of what party you are, if you're independent, Republican, Democrat, you have a right to see your elected member of Congress, whose job it is to serve and represent you. And you're right. I've had plenty of town halls where people not even from my district have shown up. And, you know, yeah, they give me a tough time. That's kind of part of the gig, being a publicly elected official. You're never going to make everybody happy. But my job, part of it is you go home, you go to your town halls, you explain what you're doing. Sometimes you've got to face the music. There's tough votes that we've got to take here. But our job is to hear from people. And if you aren't doing town halls because your own residents and members of your community are upset with what you're doing, the answer is you've got to own your decisions. And so what should Democrats do right now? Because there is a vacuum that's being created where even in these Republican districts, and these are not a lot of a lot of the time, these are not even swing districts. These are R plus 20, R plus 25 districts. That means 20 or 25 points more, more Republican than the rest of the nation. And so they're not able to speak to anybody because their representatives aren't showing up. And so is there an opportunity for Democrats to be able to step in here? Yeah, totally. I mean, listen, if your representative is not doing a town hall, give me a ring. I mean, I don't know if an R plus 25 district would have me, but I'm always willing to be proven wrong. And I mean, I'll say it right here, right now. If a deep red Republican district wants to have an honest conversation, even if it's with someone they disagree with, I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to meet with Republicans and just be honest about where I stand, where they stand. We can explain and understand each other better. But I definitely think it creates a vacuum. And even if it's not a Democratic member, people can host community town halls. You don't need a member of Congress to host a town hall. And just host one without them. So I want to switch gears a little bit here, too. Obviously, you've been subject to attacks, public attacks by Tom Homan, Trump's ICE director. And we've seen numerous instances where Trump's law enforcement officials, including Ed Martin, U.S. attorney's office here in D.C. and Pam Pondy have really focused their attention right now, not on violent criminals, not on terrorist organizations or domestic terrorists, but rather on focusing on Democrats themselves. And so what's your reaction to the fact that, for example, these things are being done kind of to the detriment of focusing on actual violent criminals by putting you guys in their crosshairs? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, with all of this shift in focus, we really haven't seen before this kind of Hollywoodification of law enforcement activity. You've got Kristi Noem doing made-for-TV ICE stings where they get — by the way, they pick up almost nobody in these. You've got Tom Homan going on Fox News, threatening members of Congress for educating everyday Americans of their constitutional rights. You know, it's not just that this is a deep, deep betrayal of their jobs, but it's also the fact that every time you see Tom Homan on Fox News, every time you see Kristi Noem, every time you see these law enforcement officials doing flashy television interviews, understand that they are taking resources away from looking at human trafficking. They are taking attention and focus and real dollars and real resources away from actual drug enforcement, trafficking enforcement, actually going after and actually trying to investigate really harmful activity that is happening. And so it's harmful in every aspect. Does it surprise you that after years and years and years of them wailing about this idea of the weaponization of government, that the first chance they have in power, within just weeks of this administration, they're already writing inquiry letters to members of Congress. They're targeting you. They're targeting Chuck Schumer. Well, I mean, this is the thing with Republicans. Every accusation is a confession. And we know for a fact that the Department of Justice remained independent under, you know, Democratic and Republican administrations alike prior to the Trump administration. And that independence is incredibly important. And we know that it's been independent, right? They like to cry about Joe Biden weaponizing the Department of Justice. If that was the case, I don't think we would have seen convictions of Senator Menendez. I don't think we would have seen these investigations into his own son, Hunter Biden. You know, we've seen so many investigations into Democrats under the Biden administration. Let me tell you, that's a good thing, because independence is what matters. It shouldn't matter what party you are. It shouldn't matter what your political viewpoint is. What should matter is the facts of the case. Medicaid, Social Security, these are earned benefits entitlement programs, programs that people rely on. They are lifelines for hundreds of millions of Americans. Medicaid itself is responsible for making sure that more than 70 million Americans have access to health care, children's health insurance program, tens of millions of kids, food stamps, SNAP benefits are 40 some odd million Americans. Republicans are claiming right now that they're not going to touch any of these things. Can I have your reaction to that? They're lying to you. The reason what Republicans say is, oh, these big budget cuts don't actually say the word Medicaid in it. So they aren't Medicaid cuts. But if I tell you 10 minus what's 10 minus four and you say six, I can just tell you I didn't say six. Right. But they put the 10 minus four into the bill. By virtue of ascribing 880 billion dollars in cuts to energy and commerce and the only mathematical way for them to cut 880 billion dollars is to focus on Medicaid. That's right. They're saying cut 880 billion dollars from Energy and Commerce Committee. I sit on that committee. And Energy and Commerce, almost the entire budget that Energy and Commerce really explores is Medicaid and Medicare. There is no way that they can make their math square without enormous and devastating cuts to Medicaid. I just talked to a woman right there in that room. She adopted her eight-year-old nephew who has severe developmental disabilities, autism, other types of disabilities. And by the way, her nephew, tragic story, his, her nephew's parents have passed away. She amazingly took him under her care. And she has two jobs. She needs Medicaid for her nephew to live and to continue to develop. And Republicans just want to cut it. I mean, these are people's lives on the line. They are going to claim that any cuts that they make are going to just fall into this bucket of waste, fraud and abuse. We've already seen them begun to, you know, begin to even Trump at the presidential address for the joint session of Congress has already started introducing this idea, debuting this new conspiracy theory that there are just thousands and thousands and thousands of people committing fraud through Social Security. Is that the case? It's not. I mean, how long, how many times have we gone through Republican administrations accusing this? And so they have cut every single benefit program that actually serves everyday people all the way down to the bone already. But you know what they aren't cutting? Tax cuts for G-wagons. You know what they aren't cutting? The tax cuts for private jets. And I want you to understand, I want everyone to understand that tax cuts cost money. We have to pay for them. So every dollar that you spend in federal taxes is going to pay for some rich person's G-wagon. And it's also going to cut in eight year old kids with autism's ability to access Medicaid. That's what they are putting on the table. That's what they're trying to make worse. And frankly, I don't care what party you are. We cannot stand for this. What do you make of the fact that while we're seeing cuts to to Medicaid, food stamps, education funding, watching veterans get fired, that at the same time, you've got Elon Musk, the co-president for Donald Trump, basically consolidating all of these federal contracts, even to the point where there was a contract that was already allocated to Verizon, that was given instead to Starlink. Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know if you've been seeing some of the news, but Starlink satellites are already kind of falling out of the sky. This is a rickety, rackety system. And he does not deserve these contracts. He has an enormous conflict of interest with these contracts. He is going in, cutting these contracts and then giving them to himself and acting like he's some kind of good guy. It's not the case. And finally, let's finish off with this. What do you make of the fact that Republicans immediately moved to censure Representative Al Green for interrupting Trump's presidential address in the aftermath of folks like Marjorie Tilley Green, for example, spending all of their time during Joe Biden's addresses, getting up and yelling themselves? Yeah, like they're just a spectacle, right? They're just, this is not about, you know, for a party that loves to talk about free speech, they lay down the hardest hammer in trying to intimidate and punish anyone who does anything that they don't like. And the point of it is trying to make an example out of one person so that none of us stand up. And it's really important that we understand what they're trying to do and not play their game. And we've seen that chilling effect. And I promise this will be the last one. We've seen this chilling effect, not just among members of Congress, but also from Trump himself with media companies and forcing these tech billionaires to come and bend the knee. And so can you speak about the standard that they're setting in terms of trying to really get every single sector of whether it's CEOs, whether it's tech billionaires, whether it's these members of Congress, elected officials, whether, you know, getting them to all kind of quiet down? Yeah. I mean, this is just corruption, plain and simple. All of these media settlements where they're trying to settle cases that we know would probably just be dismissed in court. They're trying to settle these cases in order to funnel money to Elon Musk. They're trying to buy up all of the Trump coins and crypto assets in order to funnel that money to Donald Trump. It's not just that Trump is corrupt. It's that everyone participating in this is corrupt. Elon is corrupt. Jeff Bezos is corrupt. Mark Zuckerberg is corrupt in participating in this scheme that we all know everyone's just trying to look the other way because who really cares, right? And it's this idea of cynicism. It's this idea that no one cares about fairness anyway. No one cares about the rules anyway. So who cares if we break them? But at the end of the day, once again, who suffers? It's the eight-year-old kids with devastating autism diagnoses. It's the parents, the public librarian who had to quit his job to take care of his 16-year-old son with devastating medical disabilities. And now he might be on the street because they want to cut Medicaid in order to give even more tax cuts to folks like Bezos and Elon Musk. We need to fight for the basic, dignified society that is just giving working people a fair shake. Perfectly put. Representative AOC, thanks so much for taking the time. Thank you. Thank you so much.